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> Nobody is lazy at playing video games or eating a favorite food. I cannot disagree more. You can be lazy about something that brings enjoyment. Laziness is s

> Nobody is lazy at playing video games or eating a favorite food. I cannot disagree more. You can be lazy about something that brings enjoyment. Laziness is stagnation without regard for enjoyment or perceptions. In other words it is the opposite of ambition or progression. For example you can enjoy playing video games and yet become lazy about it through a lack of effort in that a decline of related goals does not necessarily translate into lower interest or participation. Spinning the subject into something entirely unrelated, such as sensitivity or self-esteem, completely misses the point and could actually be really harmful advise. If you wish to focus upon or improve enjoyment, self-esteem, or emotional well being the do so with great deliberation but not because you have confused those with effort. —- Think of mental laziness as a lack of mental exercise. Mental exercise, such as tough decisions, actually burn more calories and impact your overall physiology. The only way to fight mental laziness is to increase your own self awareness with a goal for self improvement over time, like working out the rest of your body. Some helpful tools are reminders, taking notes, reviewing prior decisions, and advice from other people. To fight mental laziness I recommend focusing on these criteria: * criticality - don’t be afraid to ask questions and seek greater learning * originality - try something new. A new approach may require a far lower effort and yet may cause anxiety. Confront and appreciate that anxiety directly as part your increased self-awareness * empathy - empathy is the cognitive exercise of perceiving the situations of other people. Do not confuse it for sympathy, the process of sharing an emotional response. Empathy requires deliberate effort and often does not result in sympathetic state * deliberation - own your decisions. Take credit for all decisions without fear. If you are afraid to associate a decision with your reputation then somebody will make the decision for you. It is better to make a wrong decision early than to put that decision off to a future time. A wrong decision in the short term results in learning that can result in corrective decisions that would otherwise be absent.

ath92 7y ago
The way I view it, Daniel's point was to focus less on what other people expect of you, and to think less in ways like 'will this help me progress in my career'. Both are examples of extrinsic motivation. Instead, reframing your goals in terms of serving an intrinsic goal (e.g. 'I do this because it is interesting', or 'I do this because it helps my community') has been shown experimentally to improve longer term persistence at achieving those goals [0]. [0] https://lirias.kuleuven.be/retrieve/517626 https://lirias.kuleuven.be/retrieve/517626
- austincheney 7y ago
  They shifted the conversation away from mental laziness to conformity and then provided a remedy that cures neither serving as a distraction from the subject at hand. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conformity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conformity
jpdus 7y ago
Very good point. You can be ambitious playing video games (e.g. put a lot of practice into it, get to the top of the ladder in a competitive game or organize a big clan/guild/tournament) or lazy playing video games (download some free to play game or "idle" game and just click away without putting mental effort in it). And from personal experience, people who are ambitious in video games are mostly able to transfer that ambition to other areas of life. There was even a paper [1] that compares managing a successful WoW raid guild to managing a company. I had many meetings with both, guild/raid leaders and managers of multinational companies and would confirm that many personality traits are similar. However, the average gamer probably tends a bit more to the "lazy" side of things but probably the area of application (e.g. job/computer games) is not the right category to explore/define mental laziness. [1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228773214_Leadership_Style_in_World_of_Warcraft_Raid_Guilds https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228773214_Leadershi...
superfreek 7y ago
I read the top comment and I was like, WOW - I never thought of it that way, this is it! But then I read your reply to the top comment and again I was like: WOW - I never thought of it that way, this is it! I'm going to read some of the other comments as well. I must confess, I'm a little bit scared now.
smallgovt 7y ago
I think you've outlined an excellent framework/technique to self improvement -- not dissimilar to the Carol Dweck's 'Growth Mindset'. However, I think it's very likely GP has a much more pernicious problem. That is, he is afraid to make mistakes. The sentence that highlights this for me is -- "I have realized that I easily give up when I face a hard problem." If you're afraid of making mistakes, you won't be willing to ask questions (in case it makes you look stupid). And, you won't be willing to try something new (because learning something new leads to mistakes). This fear of making mistakes is often rooted in an extrinsic desire to be perfect. And, based on GP's description, this desire likely came from his demanding upbringing (read: parents). GP, I highly recommend Carol Dweck's book 'The Growth Mindset'. It's not just OK to make mistakes -- it's often a GOOD thing because it means you're on the path of progress.
- jldugger 7y ago
  > I highly recommend Carol Dweck's book 'The Growth Mindset'. Is this another one of those research findings that propagated into a book but failed to survive peer replication?
- austincheney 7y ago
  This sounds like uncertainty avoidance. Normally that term is applied to social groups opposed to individuals, but I am going to use it here because it describes the psychology behind the kind of fear you speak to. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_avoidance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_avoidance I suspect for some persons perfectionism is a problem, but the frequency with which mental laziness occurs and the rarity with which perfectionism occurs suggests there are different or multiple motivating factors. Perhaps a common answer is that many people are unknowingly willing to sacrifice flexibility and freedom for familiarity and predictability. This is even evidenced by how people write software.
davidajackson 7y ago
It's also true though that sometimes laziness can drive ambition. Maybe you come across something that's complex and a pain to do, so you create a better, simpler way to do it. It may be a progression in another, sometimes better direction that other people at first glance might consider 'lazy'.
JangoSteve 7y ago
> If you are afraid to associate a decision with your reputation then somebody will make the decision for you. It is better to make a wrong decision early than to put that decision off to a future time. A wrong decision in the short term results in learning that can result in corrective decisions that would otherwise be absent. While I agree with everything else you said, I can't disagree with this more. If someone else is more qualified or better able to make a more informed decision than you are, then let them! Why worry about whether it was you or someone else who made the decision, when the real focus should be on maximizing the right decisions. Furthermore, how do you know that a wrong decision early is better than putting a decision off until a future time? While I can think of some cases where this is true, I can also think of a LOT of cases where this is absolutely untrue. Some wrong decisions can be very damaging and irreversible. There are also many decisions that don't affect anyone adversely the later they're made up until some ultimate deadline (like turning in homework when you're younger, or filing applications for an RFQ, or many other similar things); the only reason to finalize decisions for these kinds of things earlier than necessary is to ease your own cognitive overhead rather than actually being better for anyone else. The hard part about making decisions often isn't just the decision itself, but also in understanding the risks and trade-offs of making a potentially wrong decision now, versus making a better informed decision at a later time, and deciding which is the better approach for any given decision that needs to be made.
- austincheney 7y ago
  > If someone else is more qualified or better able to make a more informed decision than you are, then let them! That is called delegation of responsibility. If you are not qualified to make a certain professional decision or if such a decision exceeds your delegated responsibility then you need to bring somebody else in, possibly a supervisor. That consideration is itself a decision and it should not be delayed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delegation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delegation > Furthermore, how do you know that a wrong decision early is better than putting a decision off until a future time? Exactly. You have no idea until you can determine the result. If you fail early and have the awareness to recognize that failure you are in a far stronger position for all forthcoming decisions. If you wait to make that decision all the time between now then remains an unknown and you also aren't completing any resulting actions. So not only does risk increase but your productivity proportionally decreases. It makes sense to wait on a decision only when that decision is both critical and costly and even then the only advantage on waiting is to perform further investigation. There is no advantage in hesitation only for the sake of hesitation, because then you are allowing external factors to influence the conditions away from what you currently know. > The hard part about making decisions often isn't just the decision itself, but also in understanding the risks and trade-offs of making a potentially wrong decision now This isn't something that software developers are well equipped for. Other industries have specific processes and criteria for evaluating risk in a uniform and standard way as well as the processes to apply the proper controls. These are basic trade practices that are often affirmed through education and licensing with bodies of enforcement. Software, on the other hand, does not have a commonly recognized ethics enforcement/evaluation body to define these trade practices. In practice most of this is outsourced to security professionals, for example people holding one of the various ISC2 certifications: https://www.isc2.org/ethics/ https://www.isc2.org/ethics/
m463 7y ago
"Yeah, well, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man." - Jeff Bridges in the Big Lebowski

ath92 7y ago

The way I view it, Daniel's point was to focus less on what other people expect of you, and to think less in ways like 'will this help me progress in my career'. Both are examples of extrinsic motivation. Instead, reframing your goals in terms of serving an intrinsic goal (e.g. 'I do this because it is interesting', or 'I do this because it helps my community') has been shown experimentally to improve longer term persistence at achieving those goals [0]. [0] https://lirias.kuleuven.be/retrieve/517626 https://lirias.kuleuven.be/retrieve/517626

austincheney 7y ago
They shifted the conversation away from mental laziness to conformity and then provided a remedy that cures neither serving as a distraction from the subject at hand. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conformity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conformity

jpdus 7y ago

Very good point. You can be ambitious playing video games (e.g. put a lot of practice into it, get to the top of the ladder in a competitive game or organize a big clan/guild/tournament) or lazy playing video games (download some free to play game or "idle" game and just click away without putting mental effort in it). And from personal experience, people who are ambitious in video games are mostly able to transfer that ambition to other areas of life. There was even a paper [1] that compares managing a successful WoW raid guild to managing a company. I had many meetings with both, guild/raid leaders and managers of multinational companies and would confirm that many personality traits are similar. However, the average gamer probably tends a bit more to the "lazy" side of things but probably the area of application (e.g. job/computer games) is not the right category to explore/define mental laziness. [1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228773214_Leadership_Style_in_World_of_Warcraft_Raid_Guilds https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228773214_Leadershi...

superfreek 7y ago

I read the top comment and I was like, WOW - I never thought of it that way, this is it! But then I read your reply to the top comment and again I was like: WOW - I never thought of it that way, this is it! I'm going to read some of the other comments as well. I must confess, I'm a little bit scared now.

smallgovt 7y ago

I think you've outlined an excellent framework/technique to self improvement -- not dissimilar to the Carol Dweck's 'Growth Mindset'. However, I think it's very likely GP has a much more pernicious problem. That is, he is afraid to make mistakes. The sentence that highlights this for me is -- "I have realized that I easily give up when I face a hard problem." If you're afraid of making mistakes, you won't be willing to ask questions (in case it makes you look stupid). And, you won't be willing to try something new (because learning something new leads to mistakes). This fear of making mistakes is often rooted in an extrinsic desire to be perfect. And, based on GP's description, this desire likely came from his demanding upbringing (read: parents). GP, I highly recommend Carol Dweck's book 'The Growth Mindset'. It's not just OK to make mistakes -- it's often a GOOD thing because it means you're on the path of progress.

jldugger 7y ago
> I highly recommend Carol Dweck's book 'The Growth Mindset'. Is this another one of those research findings that propagated into a book but failed to survive peer replication?
austincheney 7y ago
This sounds like uncertainty avoidance. Normally that term is applied to social groups opposed to individuals, but I am going to use it here because it describes the psychology behind the kind of fear you speak to. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_avoidance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_avoidance I suspect for some persons perfectionism is a problem, but the frequency with which mental laziness occurs and the rarity with which perfectionism occurs suggests there are different or multiple motivating factors. Perhaps a common answer is that many people are unknowingly willing to sacrifice flexibility and freedom for familiarity and predictability. This is even evidenced by how people write software.

davidajackson 7y ago

It's also true though that sometimes laziness can drive ambition. Maybe you come across something that's complex and a pain to do, so you create a better, simpler way to do it. It may be a progression in another, sometimes better direction that other people at first glance might consider 'lazy'.

JangoSteve 7y ago

> If you are afraid to associate a decision with your reputation then somebody will make the decision for you. It is better to make a wrong decision early than to put that decision off to a future time. A wrong decision in the short term results in learning that can result in corrective decisions that would otherwise be absent. While I agree with everything else you said, I can't disagree with this more. If someone else is more qualified or better able to make a more informed decision than you are, then let them! Why worry about whether it was you or someone else who made the decision, when the real focus should be on maximizing the right decisions. Furthermore, how do you know that a wrong decision early is better than putting a decision off until a future time? While I can think of some cases where this is true, I can also think of a LOT of cases where this is absolutely untrue. Some wrong decisions can be very damaging and irreversible. There are also many decisions that don't affect anyone adversely the later they're made up until some ultimate deadline (like turning in homework when you're younger, or filing applications for an RFQ, or many other similar things); the only reason to finalize decisions for these kinds of things earlier than necessary is to ease your own cognitive overhead rather than actually being better for anyone else. The hard part about making decisions often isn't just the decision itself, but also in understanding the risks and trade-offs of making a potentially wrong decision now, versus making a better informed decision at a later time, and deciding which is the better approach for any given decision that needs to be made.

austincheney 7y ago
> If someone else is more qualified or better able to make a more informed decision than you are, then let them! That is called delegation of responsibility. If you are not qualified to make a certain professional decision or if such a decision exceeds your delegated responsibility then you need to bring somebody else in, possibly a supervisor. That consideration is itself a decision and it should not be delayed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delegation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delegation > Furthermore, how do you know that a wrong decision early is better than putting a decision off until a future time? Exactly. You have no idea until you can determine the result. If you fail early and have the awareness to recognize that failure you are in a far stronger position for all forthcoming decisions. If you wait to make that decision all the time between now then remains an unknown and you also aren't completing any resulting actions. So not only does risk increase but your productivity proportionally decreases. It makes sense to wait on a decision only when that decision is both critical and costly and even then the only advantage on waiting is to perform further investigation. There is no advantage in hesitation only for the sake of hesitation, because then you are allowing external factors to influence the conditions away from what you currently know. > The hard part about making decisions often isn't just the decision itself, but also in understanding the risks and trade-offs of making a potentially wrong decision now This isn't something that software developers are well equipped for. Other industries have specific processes and criteria for evaluating risk in a uniform and standard way as well as the processes to apply the proper controls. These are basic trade practices that are often affirmed through education and licensing with bodies of enforcement. Software, on the other hand, does not have a commonly recognized ethics enforcement/evaluation body to define these trade practices. In practice most of this is outsourced to security professionals, for example people holding one of the various ISC2 certifications: https://www.isc2.org/ethics/ https://www.isc2.org/ethics/

m463 7y ago

"Yeah, well, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man." - Jeff Bridges in the Big Lebowski